Posts Tagged ‘visual novel’

“The Reject Demon: Toko” is a free kinetic Visual Novel and it will be out February 14th. No writing from me on it, but the music is heavy and volume two should be enough indication I’m all for girl rock/metal bands.

I have had time to deal with personal matters and a few projects, although I know all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to do all I want to. Which is okay, if you consider I would probably not be able to do all I want even if I had infinite time… Reading the “blog posts” of Koji Kumeta always gets me like this because his personal despair over mundane and publishing subjects reads as my own if I could write like that: I loved seeing him talk about how petty one can be over the silliest things. He is one of the authors I hope I can meet one day, along with Hirohiko Araki and the one who doesn’t know I’m his rival yet.

NisiOisiN.

Right now, of course, there is no way I can stand a fight against him: he writes better and faster than I do; as a fellow college dropout he managed to get published early and has been experiencing commercial success (except for a particular flop regarding a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure novel I want to read more just to see what could have possibly gone so wrong with a retelling of the story seen through Dio’s eyes that would deserve so many one-star ratings on Amazon.jp) ever since; he got animated by SHAFT; he drinks with Araki (and I don’t even drink, but I got really jealous) and wrote novels for Death Note and xxxHolic too. Basically, he has quite a lot of what I want.

And I really admire him. I want neither to take any of these away from him or for him to recognize me; those ideals would be either immoral or pure, silly Shounen manga thinking. I do want, however, to rise to his level in quality and efficiency.

Writing doesn’t come naturally for me, and I guess it shows: I don’t really think in words, which might be the main reason why they fascinate me so much. After all, what can be more interesting than learning something new, be it an idiom, random trivia or a more specific branch of science? I wasn’t made for this, because if life was a role playing game my points would not be invested in any sort of productive attributes but rather in data absorption. To illustrate that, on the day I was fired I managed to read over two thousand pages of manga. It took me around an hour and I remember it vividly. Now ask me how long did I take to write the two Shiina Ryo novels.

(Would recommend Oyasumi Punpun to anyone who is not actively suicidal any day, by the way.)

My editor surprised me by letting me know I am no longer the “trouble writer” of his roster because, for good or bad, during the past year or two I did finish a couple novels, which apparently is more than he can say of all of his pets. It infuriates me to no end how I did it, though: after half a year not doing anything significant other than planning I managed to write around forty thousand words in a boss rush of two months but most of it on the last days. That is, however, still nothing: the legend states that NisiOisiN wrote the second Zaregoto novel in three days, which is very ironic since it surpasses the first novel in every sense. My greatest achievement recently was writing two thousand words of original fiction with just a faint idea of the theme in little more than half an hour so either way, I still have a lot of ground to cover.

But if I can learn, I’m going to catch up at some point. So watch out, NisiOisiN, this underdog might take a while but he’s coming for you. You inspire me and whether you’ll enjoy it, regret it or never even acknowledge it, I will do my best to get there anyway. I will not base my success in you alone, but if I can I will surpass you.

Just watch me.

PS: my editor was on vacation, so I don’t know when you’re getting the Kouma chapter. Hopefully soon. Love you guys, thanks for being so patient and understanding. Will make up to you.